


A Sense of Scale

by alphera



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Vague allusions to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 13:00:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5786155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alphera/pseuds/alphera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock was broken. He couldn’t remember when or how or why it became so – as a child, he’d been much less precise in his deletions, and the answers to these questions were as irretrievable to him as the time he learned that the earth went ‘round the sun. He had never tried to hide it or deny it – truth and facts, after all, were what he lived for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Sense of Scale

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to my baby cousin. Not so baby anymore, really. We’re not as close as we used to be, but she’ll always be my favourite baby cousin, and I wish she never had to go through what she did. One day maybe I’ll have the courage to show this to her, and to give her the hug and the kiss I never gave her.

Sherlock was broken.

 

He couldn’t remember when or how or why it became so; as a child, he’d been much less precise in his deletions, and these were as irretrievable to him as the time he learned that the earth went ‘round the sun. He had never tried to hide it or deny it – truth and facts, after all, were what he lived for.

 

It didn’t mean he liked it.

 

In fact, he liked it as much as he liked the fact that Mycroft would always be smarter than him – that was, not at all. One could even say he resented it.

 

In a lot of ways, Sherlock had hoped John Watson would fix him. From the very first smile John wrenched out of him, a tiny little bud bloomed in both his mind and in the gawping emptiness in his chest where his heart should have been – and he had let it.

 

When he felt the sharp claws of fear squeezing his heart when Moriarty had John at the pool and the subsequent light headed relief when they walked out of it alive, he thought he was fixed, and it was glorious.

 

But he wasn’t, and he would never be. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t bring himself to do what other people did – smile, touch, reassure. Even a casual hand to a shoulder brought bile up his throat, and every cheery elbow in jest made him freeze. Every nice word he’d wanted to utter stayed lodged firmly in his brain.

 

When Sherlock left to dismantle Moriarty’s web, he practiced. At first, it was a necessity. More flies are caught with honey, and the drive to go <i> _home </i>_ was stronger than even his brokenness. Three years of practice, and he’d deemed himself good enough to fool perhaps even Mycroft. Good enough to act whole.

 

But then he went home, John wasn’t there. There was a woman now. A better version of him, with all the danger but none of the sharp broken-glass edges.

 

At least all his practice could still pay off, even if in the end he had to use it on Janine instead of the one he’d done it all for.

 

\---

 

Mycroft could count his failures in one hand, but in the end it didn’t matter because the biggest one was worth everything.

 

He was called the Iceman because he was unafraid, untouchable. Whatever threat or blackmail anyone presented to him, all he had to offer were raised brows and condescending scoffs. But no one, not even the Iceman, was infallible.

 

The reason he became the Iceman was because nothing could be worse than what had already happened.

 

Sherlock thought that the deletion of much of his childhood was an accident, an experiment gone wrong. Mycroft knew it wasn’t. And Mycroft knows that the deletion was imperfect – that, in Sherlock’s brain, there remained shadows of a time the younger Holmes’d desperately tried to scrub clean.

 

A twitch at the scent of a certain musk. A refusal to eat after meeting men with specific features; for those in the know, it was glaringly obvious.

 

Mycroft was happy to say that the only ones left in the know were him and his parents. The one who caused all this, and all of his associates, were long gone.

 

It took him all of a year to amass enough influence to make that happen, and at first, he thought that would be enough. But it wasn’t, and so he gathered more power, more prestige. He hired the best and the brightest to help Sherlock, to give his brother the spark and the fearlessness he had once had – but it was all for nothing. In the end, even when he stood on top of everything, his brother stayed hollow.

 

So he kept himself on top, and decided that if he couldn’t fix things, then he could at least keep things from falling into even more pieces.

 

But John Watson stumbled into their lives, and Mycroft thought that maybe the Doctor could fix what the Iceman never could.

 

Brooking disappointment was part and parcel of being a genius, and a Holmes. When one stood so far ahead of others, the wait would always be far too long. It pained him, however, to be disappointed in this, of all things.

 

And, as before, there was nothing in this world he could do to fix it.

 

\---

 

She was under no illusion that, had Sherlock never disappeared, she would still be standing here this day, beside the bright star that was John Watson. She was under no illusion that she would win the battle had Sherlock started it. She was under no illusions, so she knew that everything that was happening now was because Sherlock loved John more than anything.

 

“Why?” She asked him quietly, hours before the wedding.

 

“Because you can make him happy.” he replied before nodding respectfully at her and walking away.

 

She didn't know why he thought he could not make John happy, but she couldn't help but feel guiltily relieved by it. The only threat to her marriage, to her happiness, would never interfere. In fact, he had taken great pains to support it. It made this day bittersweet, knowing that her joy was paralleled by such a sadness; but in the end, she was selfish enough to enjoy it.

 

“You are a better person than I could ever be,” Mary thought as Sherlock played his song for their wedding. “And you don’t even know it.”

 

‘Take care of him.’ Sherlock’s eyes seemed to tell her when their gazes connected.

 

She nodded, and he smiled a sad, tiny withering thing, and looked away.

 

And there, Mary’s resolve to do anything for this marriage strengthened. One man had already given up his everything for it – that sacrifice should not be wasted.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been tormenting me and has been stuck in the “I want to be written but I don’t want to solidify” realm for YEARS. AT LAST I HAVE PURGED IT.  
> As usual, many thanks to [rougewinter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/rougewinter/pseuds/rougewinter) for being my lovely beta, and thank you also [trixiedenise](http://trixiedenise.tumblr.com/) for coming up with a title (because I am hopeless). Title taken from this [poem](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/detail-woods).


End file.
